ABC chair Kim Williams has attracted considerable attention with his criticism of the broadcaster’s online news choices. Williams has taken issue with what he sees as the ABC prioritising lifestyle stories over hard news.

In the process, he has raised an important issue of principle.

Is it right for the chair to insert himself into editorial decision-making, even at the level of broad direction, as here?

Generally speaking, the answer would be no.

To see why, it is necessary only to look back to the chaotic period in 2018 when a former chair, Justin Milne, inserted himself into editorial decision-making because of concerns that the reporting of some ABC journalists was upsetting the government and thereby imperilling the ABC’s funding.

That debacle ended with the resignation not just of Milne but of the then managing director, Michelle Guthrie, leaving a sudden vacuum of leadership and a nervous newsroom.

It is therefore risky for Williams to take a step down this path.

However, the weakness of ABC news leadership requires that something be done.

This weakness has a moral as well as a professional-practice dimension.

A risky path to follow. Video: ABC News

The moral dimension is demonstrated by the treatment of high-profile staff such as Stan Grant and Laura Tingle, and of less well-known but still valued journalists such as ABC Radio Victoria’s Nicole Chvastek, and Sydney radio’s Antoinette Lattouf. All of these journalists, in various ways, have fallen victim to the ABC’s propensity to buckle under external pressure.

The professional-practice dimension is demonstrated not just by the online performance criticised by Williams but by the prioritising of police-rounds stories over far bigger issues on the evening television bulletin, and by occasional spectacular failures such as the attempt to link the late NSW Premier Neville Wran with Sydney’s Luna Park ghost train fire.

The standing of the ABC’s best journalism — programmes such as Four Corners and Radio National’s Background Briefing — is undermined by these systemic failures.

However, indicating his preference for hard news over lifestyle stories will get Williams only so far. It lies within his power and that of the board to do what ought to have been done long ago if the ABC is serious about strengthening its news service: separate the roles of managing director and editor-in-chief.

Having them in the one person creates an inherent conflict that has nothing to do with the integrity of the individual occupying the position, but everything to do with the core responsibilities of the two jobs.

The managing director, as a board member, is responsible for the overall fortunes of the ABC. This includes its financial fortunes and its relationship with its most important stakeholder, the federal government.

An editor-in-chief’s first responsibility is not to these considerations at all, but to the public interest. That requires above all the creation of a safe space in which ABC journalists can do good journalism without looking over their shoulders to see if they are going to be the next target of an attack from a politician (Chvastek), a lobby group (Antoinette Lattouf), or News Corporation (Grant and Tingle).

The Stan Grant controversy.      Video: The Guardian

It also requires the imposition of rigorous editing processes to see that stories are properly verified, accurate and fair, regardless of the standing or wilfulness of the staff involved, and that the stories deal with issues of substance.

And in the case of Lattouf, the focus shifts to the public interest in the impact on money and morale of the prolonged legal proceedings over her sacking.

She was removed from a temporary role on ABC Sydney radio for posting on Instagram a report by Human Rights Watch, in which it was alleged that Israel was using starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza.

The ABC argued unsuccessfully in the Fair Work Commission that she had not been sacked. Subsequently Lattouf made an offer to settle for $85,000 in damages and her old role back. However, the ABC has not accepted this and instead is now involved in a further legal dispute, this time in the Federal Court, over whether due process was followed in sacking her.

Fair Work Commission finds Antoinette Lattouf was sacked by ABC.  Video: ABC News

This is causing consternation in Canberra, where the Senate standing committee on environment and communications has asked the ABC how much this action is costing.

The ABC has supplied the committee with the amount but it has not been made public.

It is a textbook case of how a strong editor-in-chief who was not the managing director would act in this situation. A reporter would be assigned to find out the amount, since it is clearly a matter of public interest, and a well-connected press gallery journalist would get it without too much trouble.

ABC management would then be asked to comment, and a story containing the amount and any ABC comment would be broadcast on the ABC.

A managing director has a conflicting responsibility: to do all he or she can to protect the corporate interests of the ABC, so the amount remains secret.

Meanwhile, the ABC gives rival news organisations the chance to scoop the ABC on its own story, leaving its news service looking even weaker.

Dr Denis Muller, senior research fellow of the Centre for Advancing Journalism, The University of Melbourne. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

From winning a single-party majority in 2020, Labour’s vote has virtually halved in 2023 in the Aotearoa New Zealand general election.

Pre-election polls appear to have under-estimated support for National, which on the provisional results last night can form a government with ACT and will not need NZ First, despite those same polls pointing to a three-way split.

While the Greens and Te Pāti Māori both saw big gains, taking crucial electorate seats, it has been at the expense of Labour.

Special votes are yet to be counted, and Te Pāti Māori winning so many electorate seats will cause an “overhang”, increasing the size of Parliament and requiring a larger majority to govern.

There will also be a byelection in the Port Waikato electorate on November 25, which National is expected to win.

So the picture may change between now and November 3 when the official result is revealed.

But on last night’s count, the left bloc is out of power and the right is back.

Big shift in the Māori electorates
Te Pāti Māori has performed better than expected in the Māori electorates – taking down some titans of the Labour Party and winning four of the seven seats.

The party vote remained at 2.5 perecent — consistent with 2020.

One of the biggest upsets was 21-year-old Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke’s win over Labour stalwart Nanaia Mahuta in the Hauraki-Waikato electorate. Mahuta has represented the electorate since 2008 and has been in Parliament since 1996.

This was a must-win race for Mahuta, the current foreign affairs minister, after she announced she would not be running on the Labour party list.

Labour won all seven Māori seats in 2017 and six in 2020.

Advance voting
In 2017, 1.24 million votes were cast before election day, more than the previous two elections combined.

In 2020, this rose to 1.97 million people – an extremely high early vote figure attributable to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This year, more than 1.3 million New Zealanders cast advance votes before election day – higher than 2017 but significantly lower than 2020.

The comeback kid
After a dismal showing at the 2020 election, NZ First’s Winston Peters has yet again shown himself to be the comeback kid of New Zealand politics. Peters and his party have provisionally gained nearly 6.5 percent of the vote, giving them eight seats in Parliament.

On the current numbers, the National Party will not need NZ First to help form the government. But the result is still a massive reversal of fortune for Peters, who failed to meet the 5 percent threshold or win an electorate seat in 2020.

The heart of Wellington goes Green
Urban electorates in the capital Wellington have resoundingly shifted left, with wins for the Green Party’s Tamatha Paul in Wellington Central and Julie Anne Genter in Rongotai.

Chlöe Swarbrick has retained her seat in Auckland Central.

The Wellington electorates had previously been Labour strongholds. But the decision by outgoing Finance Minister Grant Robertson to compete as a list-only MP opened Wellington Central to Paul, currently a city councillor.

Genter takes the seat from outgoing Labour MP Paul Eagle.

Both Wellington electorates have also seen sizeable chunks of the party vote — 30 percent in Rongotai and almost 36 percent in Wellington Central — go to the Greens.

Debrin Foxcroft, deputy New Zealand editor, The Conversation; Finlay Macdonald, New Zealand editor, The Conversation; Matt Garrow, editorial web developer, The Conversation, and Veronika Meduna, science, health + environment New Zealand editor, The Conversation. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The extraordinary flood event Auckland experienced on the night of January 27, the eve of the city’s anniversary weekend, was caused by rainfall that was literally off the chart.

Over 24 hours, 249mm of rain fell — well above the previous record of 161.8mm. A state of emergency was declared late in the evening.

It has taken a terrible toll on Aucklanders, with three people reported dead and at least one more missing. Damage to houses, cars, roads and infrastructure will run into many millions of dollars.

Aerial footage shows the scale of devastation following the #Auckland #floods as clean up gets underway.

Several houses can be seen damaged by large slips, while rivers could be seen overflowing.

👉 More on this story: https://t.co/DgUHYaCFGS pic.twitter.com/aVTPq2D4Ij

— 1News (@1NewsNZ) January 28, 2023

Watching the images roll into social media on Friday evening, I thought to myself that I have seen these kinds of pictures before. But usually they’re from North America or Asia, or maybe Europe.

However, this was New Zealand’s largest city, with a population of 1.7 million.

Nowhere is safe from extreme weather these days.

🌧 Radar time lapse of the Auckland rain since yesterday morning

🔎 Look closely at the north-to-south line of torrential rain between 5-9pm directly over the city

🔺 Normally features like this move on relatively quickly, but not in this case, which was what made it so extreme pic.twitter.com/cv3jJaKr8R

— MetService (@MetService) January 27, 2023

How it happened
The torrential rain came from a storm in the north Tasman Sea linked to a source of moisture from the tropics. This is what meteorologists call an “atmospheric river”.

The storm was quite slow-moving because it was cradled to the south by a huge anticyclone (a high) that stopped it moving quickly across the country.

Embedded in the main band of rain, severe thunderstorms developed in the unstable air over the Auckland region. These delivered the heaviest rain falls, with MetService figures showing Auckland Airport received its average monthly rain for January in less than hour.

Record breaking rain in Auckland. Although the heavy band of rain has moved off to the east there is still a change of showers so the total for rainfall could climb even higher. The impacts of the last 24 hours will be felt by many in Auckland for a long time. Take care out there pic.twitter.com/kiIm6Tsrro

— MetService (@MetService) January 27, 2023

The type of storm which brought the mayhem was not especially remarkable, however. Plenty of similar storms have passed through Auckland. But, as the climate continues to warm, the amount of water vapour in the air increases.

I am confident climate change contributed significantly to the incredible volume of rain that fell so quickly in Auckland this time.

Warmer air means more water
There will be careful analysis of historical records and many simulations with climate models to nail down the return period of this flood (surely in the hundreds of years at least, in terms of our past climate).

How much climate change contributed to the rainfall total will be part of those calculations. But it is obvious to me this event is exactly what we expect as a result of climate change.

One degree of warming in the air translates, on average, to about 7 percent more water vapour in that air. The globe and New Zealand have experienced a bit over a degree of warming in the past century, and we have measured the increasing water vapour content.

But when a storm comes along, it can translate to much more than a 7 percent increase in rainfall. Air “converges” (is drawn in) near the Earth’s surface into a storm system. So all that moister air is brought together, then “wrung out” to deliver the rain.

A severe thunderstorm is the same thing on a smaller scale. Air is sucked in at ground level, lofted up and cooled quickly, losing much of its moisture in the process.

While the atmosphere now holds 7 percent more water vapour, this convergence of air masses means the rain bursts can be 10 percent or even 20 percent heavier.

Auckland bus way swamped pic.twitter.com/9XIcsm2Lrz

— Adam (@CrazyIdeasNZ) January 27, 2023

Beyond the capacity of stormwater systems
The National Institute of Water and Atmosphere (NIWA) estimates that over Auckland, one degree of warming translates to about a 20 percent increase in the one-hour rainfall, for a one-in-50-year event.

The longer we continue to warm the climate, the heavier the storm rainfalls will get.

Given what we have already seen, how do we adapt? Flooding happens when stormwater cannot drain away fast enough.

So what we need are bigger drains, larger stormwater pipes and stormwater systems that can deal with such extremes.

The country’s stormwater drain system was designed for the climate we used to have — 50 or more years ago. What we need is a stormwater system designed for the climate we have now, and the one we’ll have in 50 years from now.

Another part of the response can be a “softening” of the urban environment. Tar-seal and concrete surfaces force water to stay at the surface, to pool and flow.

If we can re-expose some of the streams that have been diverted into culverts, re-establish a few wetlands among the built areas, we can create a more spongy surface environment more naturally able to cope with heavy rainfall.

These are the responses we need to be thinking about and taking action on now.

We also need to stop burning fossil fuels and get global emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases down as fast as we can. New Zealand has an emissions reduction plan — we need to see it having an effect from this year.

And every country must follow suit.

As I said at the start, no community is immune from these extremes and we must all work together.

Dr James Renwick, professor, Physical Geography (climate science), Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The bell has been rung, the shadow campaign is now official, and Australia heads to the polls on May 21. As the government enters caretaker mode, Australia enters a highly consequential period of democratic deliberation, but not for the reasons you might think.

It suits politicians — and many in the media — to portray a federal election as a grand job application process in which voters comprise the selection panel. But that’s really only half the story.

Political commentator Sean Kelly has written a convincing book on how Scott Morrison turned the 2019 election into a choice between him and the then Opposition Leader Bill Shorten.

Morrison won when Australians were more attracted to his persona than that of his opponent. Policy played a small part, notably when bold proposals on the Labor side became a lightening rod for fear.

This time around we are again likely to see a focus on leadership eclipse policy debate. Morrison enters this campaign behind in the polls and as an unusually unpopular prime minister, but with an unshakeable faith he can turn it around.

Labor knows Morrison is on the nose, and will be perfectly happy to cast the election to a referendum on their leader Anthony Albanese versus an unpopular PM.

If we let this happen it will be a poor outcome, no matter who wins. The great drawback of democracy is that while voters get to decide who forms government, we have little power to set the agenda.

Wasting a precious chance
Yet if we can’t have a proper policy debate during a campaign, we waste a precious chance to talk about the things that matter most to us.

The US journalism academic Jay Rosen takes a keen interest in Australian media. For for many years, he has been critical of Australian media’s over-reliance on polls and tendency to treat covering politics like calling a horse race.

Rosen says this means the media allows the politicians to decide what gets talked about. Important topics get neglected as the spin-doctors steer the discussion to narrow areas where they think their party might have an advantage.

With this in mind, The Conversation is determined to cover this election differently. We are going to talk about what what matters most to us — the policies that affect our lives and the future of the planet.

As a first step, we are going to set our own citizens’ policy agenda in collaboration with our readers. Please help us by filling out our #SetTheAgenda poll.

Once we know more about what you’d like to see on the agenda, we will report back on what you’ve said and tap into the deep expertise of the thousands of academic experts who write for The Conversation.

We will bring you coverage with a clear focus on the major problems we face as a society, and try to provide evidence-based solutions that the experts think could actually work.

Final ingredient
The final ingredient is the best coverage of the politics of the campaign from one of Australia’s most respected political correspondents, Michelle Grattan, backed up by the economic nous and insight of Peter Martin.

Michelle will be writing regularly throughout the campaign and you can subscribe to her politics podcast for in-depth interviews and informed commentary

We’re also bringing back the much-loved ABC radio presenter Jon Faine for Below the Line, an election podcast with political scientists Anika Gauja and Simon Jackman from the University of Sydney and La Trobe University’s Andrea Carson.

As always, we will do everything in our power to be evidence-led and non-partisan. In a media environment manipulated by vested interests and saturated with opinions, we are committed to covering issues chosen by you and hosting a genuine debate that focuses on the public interest.

Please take advantage of this opportunity to have your say and contribute to our efforts to ensure the democratic discussion is calm, compassionate, accountable and fair.

Misha Ketchell is editor and and executive director, The Conversation. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Prime Minister and Labour leader Jacinda Ardern and National Party leader Judith Collins met tonight for the first televised debate of the 2020 election campaign.

With the results of the latest 1 News-Colmar Brunton poll released only an hour earlier, there was much at stake.

While down slightly on previous polls, Labour was still in a position to govern alone – comfortably so if the Greens joined them in a coalition agreement. National was still well behind, clearly bleeding votes to ACT on its right.

Nonetheless, the debate was a fair and largely evenly matched contest, covering the covid-19 response, border control, health, housing, employment, income inequality and climate change.

A panel of experts watched the debate closely for The Conversation to assess what it revealed about policy, performance and the likely tone of the campaign to come.

Genuine differences in substance and style

Grant Duncan, associate professor for the School of People, Environment and Planning, Massey University

Leaders debates are like reality TV. “Who gets voted off the island? Jacinda or Judith?” Fun to watch, but they misrepresent how elections work.

In their proportional representation system, New Zealanders do not vote for prime ministers; they vote for representatives – one local representative, and one party of representatives.

Despite misleading impressions, however, the first debate between the leaders of the two largest parties revealed genuine differences of style and substance. The debate delivered on substantial issues, from climate change to housing the poor.

Collins was quick to call out “nonsense” and often looked fed-up. She criticised the Ardern government for failing to reduce material hardship for the poor, even though her own plan to “stimulate the economy” with tax cuts would most benefit middle- to higher-income earners. She would raise housing supply through reforming laws that affect developers.

Ardern was reserved but sincere. She acknowledged that it’s been a tough time for New Zealanders, but backed public investment in people and their well-being. She saw climate change innovation as an opportunity for farmers and agriculture, not a cost.

Both leaders showed substance, but different styles. National will go for stimulus through tax cuts; Labour will stimulate through raising incomes for the lowest earners. I’d call it a draw.

#BREAKING: The latest 1 NEWS Colmar Brunton Poll results are out. #YourVote2020 #NZpolhttps://t.co/MOnkaHPLSS pic.twitter.com/uioCOQtEeJ

— Jessica Mutch McKay TVNZ (@MutchJessica) September 22, 2020

Big questions on climate and inequality go unanswered

Bronwyn Hayward, professor of politics at University of Canterbury

In the 2017 TVNZ election debates, no one was asked about climate change once. Thankfully it was raised early this time by Ardern and hammered home in questions – but the answers left a lot to be desired.

Collins played to her base, repeating the claim that New Zealand is so small, whatever it does won’t make a difference (it will), and that farmers feel bagged by the Greens and Labour (they do). It was left to Ardern to offer more substance and collaborative pathways forward: incentives for reducing emissions, cleaning up rivers (including urban rivers).

But beyond a bit of banter about electric vehicles, neither leader had a policy to fundamentally reduce our transport emissions. Pumped hydro schemes may help create jobs and provide stable energy supply over dry years, but neither tackled how we will afford the costs that are coming for homes and infrastructure exposed to sea level rise.

Covid-19 consumes us right now but climate change hasn’t gone away and neither has inequality. Again no one really answered the question posed by head girl of Aorere College, Aigagalefili Fepulea’i Tapua’i, about the stress on low-income school communities where students have to choose between study or taking a job to help their family.

There were gestures towards answers. Collins made the most direct connection, saying, “My husband is Samoan and had to leave school”, but had no solution. Ardern gestured towards raising the lowest incomes but didn’t make a firm commitment beyond saying, “I am not done with child poverty.”

The futures of young New Zealanders hang on what happens next.

Ardern as hard to pin down as ever

Morgan Godfery, Māori Research Partnerships manager, University of Otago

“Optimism, and that’s what Labour will bring,” the prime minister said in her opening statement, which is strangely and typically, well, contentless. It’s part of the paradox that is Jacinda Ardern – she’s the global left’s standard bearer, the most popular New Zealand prime minister in living memory, a policy leader against the coronavirus, and yet it’s almost impossible to pin down her politics beyond that optimism.

Ardern promised 8000 new homes are coming down the line, and that’s ostensibly leftist policy and politic. Yet the waiting list for public housing is 20,000 people long. Is 8000 left enough? It’s certainly left – or centre! – enough to win.

Especially against a strangely flat and staggered National Party leader. People expect Judith Collins to go hard, because of course it’s a brand she cultivates, but it was a jarring juxtaposition: the hard woman (Collins) against the kind and optimistic prime minister. The advocate for a “border protection agency” (Collins) against the person who’s protected the borders (Ardern). It was hard to pin down, then, precisely what Collins was angry at. Other, of course, than the fact she’s leading the losing side.

Questions remain about National’s border policy

Siouxsie Wiles, associate professor in Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, University of Auckland

It’s no secret that I am supportive of the current government’s elimination strategy when it comes to dealing with covid-19. The main thing I was looking to hear in the leader’s debate was a commitment from both Jacinda Ardern and Judith Collins that whatever government they lead would stick with that strategy.

The prime minister did that and reiterated the importance of a tightly managed and controlled border. In response, Collins brought up the need for “someone to be in charge”. With a National-led government that would be the job of a new border protection agency. I’m all in favour of an agency dedicated to defending us from pandemic threats, but focusing solely on our border won’t achieve that. Any agency should have a much broader remit that also addresses what makes us vulnerable to pandemics.

Collins also raised not letting anyone board a plane to New Zealand unless they test negative. This policy will certainly stop some infectious people from being able to travel but it won’t catch all of them. I really worry it’ll discriminate against those who can’t afford to, or aren’t able to, access testing. To me this policy runs the very real risk of stranding New Zealanders overseas while not really increasing the security of our border.

Both leaders will want to lift their game

Richard Shaw, professor of politics, Massey University

These are as much performances as debates. Ardern edged Collins on leadership performance, looking and sounding like someone with a 32 percent lead over her opponent in the preferred prime minister ratings and whose party has a 17 percent buffer over its major opposition: measured, polite and committed to staying clear of the tit-for-tat.

Given the polls, Collins needed to force the issue: it showed in her regular interjections (some of which were to good effect) and willingness to take the contest to Ardern (occasionally not so successfully).

On the issue of policy fluency (your own but also the other side’s), a close call went – perhaps, maybe – narrowly to Collins. As to eloquence – verbal dexterity and rhetorical flow – Ardern had the edge on her opponent (especially in her closing statement), although Collins in pugnacious mode had an energy that Ardern lacked.

These presentational dimensions of politics matter, especially at a time when voters are looking for an emotional compact with leaders.

Given the context, Collins may sleep the easier of the two tonight, but both will be looking to lift things a notch or several when they next meet.

Dr Grant Duncan is associate professor for the School of People, Environment and Planning, Massey University; Dr Bronwyn Hayward is professor of politics, University of Canterbury; Morgan Godfery is Māori Research Partnerships Manager, University of Otago; Richard Shaw is professor of Politics, Massey University, and Dr Siouxsie Wiles is associate professor in Microbiology and Infectious Diseases. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

ANALYSIS: By David Robie of the Pacific Media Centre, Auckland University of Technology

As fears grow over vulnerability to the coronavirus in parts of the Pacific, some governments stand accused of sheltering behind tough emergency or lockdown rules to silence criticism.

Already, several media freedom watchdogs and the United Nations have condemned countries – including Fiji and Papua New Guinea – for exploiting the crisis.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet has called on governments to stop using the pandemic as “a pretext to restrict information and stifle criticism”. She cites the International Press Institute’s tracking of at least 152 alleged media violations since the outbreak began in China last December.

This is no time to blame the messenger. Credible, accurate reporting is a lifeline for all of us.

READ MORE: Pacific countries score well in media freedom index, but reality is far worse

According to a new report from the International Federation of Journalists, three out of four journalists worldwide have faced intimidation, obstruction or other restrictions covering the pandemic.

In April, Papua New Guinea police minister Bryan Kramer attacked two experienced journalists, saying they “can’t be trusted” and ought to be sacked.

Kramer used his Kramer Report Facebook page to accuse Loop PNG political and business editor Freddy Mou and senior PNG Post-Courier journalist Gorethy Kenneth of misrepresenting a financial report by Treasurer Ian Ling-Stuckey. “Both journalists have close ties to the former Prime Minister Peter O’Neill,” Kramer wrote. “Both have been accused of publishing biased and misleading reports.”

Based on an interview with Ling-Stuckey, Mou’s story alleged the “bulk” of a 23 million kina (NZ$11 million) budget for COVID-19 operations was being used to hire cars and media consultants. Kenneth supported Mou by posting the interview video on social media

‘Unaceptable meddling’
Loop PNG stood by its “key facts”, saying any “misunderstanding” was “not deliberate or intentional”. Paris-based media freedom advocacy group Reporters Without Borders said the harassment was “unacceptable meddling”. The PNG Media Council called for greater “transparency”.

Ironically, Kramer has a reputation for political transparency rare in PNG. His blog pledges to tell the “inside story through in-depth investigative reporting” and boasts more than 128,000 readers in a country with low internet penetration.

PNG has eight confirmed COVID-19 cases but no deaths. However, there are fears that a serious outbreak could rapidly overwhelm the health system. Even before the pandemic, warned Human Rights Watch, “the fragile health system […] was underfunded and overwhelmed, with high rates of malaria, tuberculosis and diabetes”.

Human Rights Watch’s Georgie Bright points out that 80 percent of the PNG population is rural, the country has only 500 doctors, fewer than 4000 nurses and barely 5000 hospital beds.

The country has only 14 ventilators. A COVID-19 outbreak would be catastrophic.

Health officials also point to neighbouring Indonesian-ruled Melanesian provinces Papua and West Papua as a warning for PNG. Politicians worry about encroachments along the 820 km locked-down but still porous border.

Reliable West Papuan data are hard to obtain as they are sometimes “hidden” within Indonesian statistics, but reports indicate 283 cases and seven deaths with totals rising. Only seven respiratory doctors and 73 ventilators are available for 45 hospitals with a regional population of 4 million.

The doctor in charge of the capital Jayapura’s COVID-19 Response Team, Silwanus Sumule, told The Jakarta Post:

I know this might sound harsh for some people but this is the fact – if you don’t want to die, don’t come to Papua.

‘No mercy’ warning
Indonesian authorities warned in April that people illegally crossing borders would be shown “no mercy”, making reporting from the region particularly dangerous. Three days later, after PNG border police arrested nine “illegals”, East Sepik governor Allan Bird called for a “shoot to kill” order.

While other Pacific countries such as Cook Islands, Samoa, Solomon Islands and Tonga remain COVID-19 free, elsewhere in the Pacific media are still struggling to report the crisis, especially in the American territory of Guam (148 cases and 5 deaths) and the French territories of New Caledonia (18 cases) and Tahiti (58 cases).

On Guam, when nearly 1000 infected crew members on the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt were taken ashore, the captain who blew the whistle was relieved of his command. The Pacific Island Times has condemned a lack of transparency during a “news blackout” around a US$129 million (NZ$213 million) federal relief budget.

In Fiji, where there have been 18 coronavirus cases with no deaths, Brigadier-General Ratu Jone Kalouniwai warned in the Fiji Sun that the government had “good reasons to stifle criticism” and for “curtailing freedom of […] the press” in response to curfew violations. Two radio personalities were arrested and charged over “malicious” social media comments.

Reporters Without Borders’ Asia-Pacific director Daniel Bastard said the comments “recall the worst time of the Fijian military dictatorship from 2006 to 2014”.

Launching its 2020 global Media Freedom Index, Reporters Without Borders recently warned that the pandemic “provides authoritarian governments with an opportunity to implement the notorious ‘shock syndrome’ – to impose measures that would be impossible in normal times.”

Although Pacific nations are not among the worst offenders on the index, with factual reporting of COVID-19 crucial for vulnerable societies, any suppression or censorship is a threat.

Dr David Robie is professor of Pacific journalism and director of the Pacific Media Centre/Te Amokura at Auckland University of Technology. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor Deep Saini speaks with Michelle Grattan about the week in politics. They discuss the messaging and tactics of the leaders on the campaign trail, the resurrection of the issue of water buybacks, and the impact of Clive Palmer’s political advertising on his election chances and what his popularity means for preference deals.

– ref. VIDEO: Michelle Grattan on week two of the campaign #AusVotes – http://theconversation.com/video-michelle-grattan-on-week-two-of-the-campaign-ausvotes-116068

Our “state of the states” series takes stock of the key issues, seats and policies affecting the vote in each of Australia’s states.

We’ll check in with our expert political analysts around the country every week of the campaign for updates on how it is playing out.

New South Wales

Chris Aulich, Adjunct Professor at the University of Canberra

There is a clear fault line in the Coalition between conservatives and moderates, reflected in the number of centre-right women challenging more conservative members.

Some sitting moderates have chosen not to renominate – Ann Sudmalis in NSW won’t recontest, while Julia Banks in Victoria has resigned from the Coalition to challenge Greg Hunt in Flinders. Other moderate women are standing as independents (Kerryn Phelps and Zali Steggall in NSW, and Helen Haines in Victoria) or as candidates for other centre-right parties (Rebekha Sharkie in SA).

What typically unites these women is a rejection of conservative social policies – and perhaps also a rejection of the alleged culture of bullying within the Coalition parties. These candidates are modernists in that they support progressive policy issues. As independents they can also sidestep the Coalition’s internal fracas about quotas and targets for women.

In NSW, independent Zali Steggall is challenging Tony Abbott in Warringah. Front and centre of her campaign is action on climate change, refugee policy and foreign aid. Her views on marriage equality contrast dramatically with Abbott’s in an electorate that overwhelmingly voted “yes” in the marriage equality postal vote.

Similarly, independent MP Kerryn Phelps, contesting Wentworth, was a significant player in the marriage equality debates and has argued forcibly for a more humane treatment of asylum seekers.

Both Steggall and Phelps have complained about “dirty tricks” and the negative campaigns being mounted against them. Billboards linking Steggall to Labor, allegations that she is receiving funds from GetUp! (she is not), the renting of premises next to her office that were then plastered with anti-Steggall advertising, and the sexualising of Steggall posters all appear to be an attempt to intimidate and demean her.

A number of articles critical of Steggall have been published by the Daily Telegraph, with free copies delivered to residents who are not subscribers to the paper. This includes a front page story in which Steggall’s ex-husband and his current wife described her as “opportunistic” and “lacking the temperament of a leader”. The couple have since declared that the Telegraph article does not reflect how they feel about Steggall’s candidature.

Kerryn Phelps says dirty tricks were behind the removal of hundreds of her election posters in her campaign to retain the seat of Wentworth. Labor’s Tim Murray has also complained that his posters had been removed and replaced by Liberal posters. Liberal challenger, Dave Sharma, rejects any allegation that this activity has been sanctioned by him or the Liberal Party. Today it was reported that Sharma’s posters have also been defaced.

The seats of Wentworth and Warringah are critical to the reelection of the Morrison government and it’s clear that some supporters of the conservative wing of the Coalition have “taken off the gloves”. We can only speculate if it’s because the independents are women or because they are moderates.

Read more: Lies, obfuscation and fake news make for a dispiriting – and dangerous – election campaign

Queensland

Maxine Newlands, Senior Lecturer in Political Science at James Cook University

Labor leader Bill Shorten’s first hustings in Herbert coincided with reports of a deal that the Coalition will preference Palmer’s United Australia Party (UAP) over other populist parties.

UAP’s candidate, former NRL player Greg Dowling, will run for the lower house, while Palmer has his sights on the Senate. Palmer’s big cash splash announcement may cause more of a ripple than a bounce, considering former Queensland Nickel workers will have to wait until after the election to get their money back.

With One Nation and Fraser Anning’s Conservative National Party (FACN) also throwing their hats into the ring, there’s now four right-leaning minor parties vying for votes.

Herbert’s 2019 election is shaping up to be a rerun of 2013. Six years ago, preferences played a huge role in deciding 97 of the 150 seats nationally. 40% of Queensland seats were decided on preference votes in 2013.

The latest polling shows UAP at 14% – almost the same as 2013 after preferences (15.52%), but this was before Pauline Hanson’s One Nation (PHON) confirmed their candidate. In 2016, One Nation preferences helped push the incumbent, Labor’s Cathy O’Toole, over the line. With a preference deal between LNP and UAP, Palmer’s chance of a seat in the Senate is a good bet, but it’s now a four-way spilt for the lower house.

UAP and Katter’s Australian Party (KAP) will be the benefactors in the Herbert electorate, placed ahead of Liberals and Labor on the how-to-vote cards. In a battle between UAP, PHON and FACN, it’s the Greens that could benefit the most.

With UAP aligned with LNP, the Greens candidate Sam Blackadder has a chance of picking up protest votes against Labor. The Greens could also take votes from latecomers, the Animal Justice Party, thanks to its clear policy on climate change – something that has eluded the major parties.

There’s a similar picture in Dickson, with One Nation, Fraser Anning and the Animal Justice Party all putting up candidates. Plus there’s former Palmer United Party, now independent candidate, Thor Prohaska running on a democracy ticket.

Like Herbert, PHON and FACN will have to fight for votes from UAP in Dickson. In 2013, Palmer’s party polled 9.8% of the vote in Dickson. With UAP favouring LNP over ALP like it did in 2013, it could help Dutton to retain his marginal seat this time around.

Western Australia

Ian Cook, Senior Lecturer of Australian Politics at Murdoch University

Attention was on Bill Shorten and Clive Palmer in WA election news this week.

Bill Shorten came under scrutiny when it was revealed that three WA Labor candidates had been forced to include him in their election advertising after they were found distributing pamphlets that made no reference to the Labor leader.

Polls consistently show that Australian voters prefer Scott Morrison to Bill Shorten as prime minister. But Shorten is a bigger problem for Labor in WA than he is elsewhere – although it’s not clear by how much.

A poll last month by Crosby Textor showed that Shorten had a minus 26 favourability in the Perth seat of Cowan, which is held by Labor’s Anne Aly by a margin of just 0.7%. That makes Shorten more unpopular in Cowan than he is in other marginal seats across the country. And it’s the reason that candidates would rather put Premier Mark McGowan in their campaign material.

Like the rest of Australia, many West Australians will vote Labor even though they don’t particularly like or trust Bill Shorten. So, we can expect more ads attacking Shorten as the Liberals look to capitalise on one of the few positives (or should that be negatives) they have to work with in WA.

Clive Palmer was in WA news for the same reason he was in everyone’s news: the Newspoll that showed that his United Australia Party would change the result in some marginal seats. That includes one of one of ours: Pearce.

Read more: Grattan on Friday: All is forgiven in the Liberal embrace of Palmer

Pearce is held by Christian Porter and this election is a big moment for him. Porter was Attorney-General in Scott Morrison’s government, and he has a high profile in WA. He was also on the way to becoming premier when he took a detour into federal politics. Porter undoubtedly has ambitions and is one of the bright young(ish) things in the WA Liberal Party, so his future is important to his party’s fate in the West.

After One Nation’s disastrous campaign in the last state election, WA voters are obviously looking elsewhere and Palmer has spent a lot of money on the UAP campaign. Christian Porter and the WA Liberals will be hoping that it isn’t enough to make the difference in Pearce.

South Australia

Rob Manwaring, Senior Lecturer in Politics and Public Policy at Flinders University

It would be ironic, to say the least, if former Labor state Premier Jay Weatherill’s legacy will be to have delivered the final nail in the coffin of the Turnbull-Morrison governments.

Last week, water policy dominated the political and campaign agenda, with the issue of water buybacks causing significant problems for the Coalition, and the Nationals in particular. Yet the groundwork for this poisonous issue was laid when the Weatherill government set up a state royal commission into alleged water theft by the upstream states.

Since then, the issue has been a lingering problem, exacerbated by the dead fish in the Menindee. Since the revelations of the water buybacks story, this has proved a problematic issue, culminating with a remarkable interview on the ABC with the former Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources Barnaby Joyce.

he Darling River and the Menindee Lakes are under pressure from low water flow as a result of the continuing drought affecting more than 98% of New South Wales. Dean Lewins/AAP

While elections are rarely ever decided in key marginal South Australian seats, this issue could be the exception. It’s striking how it has unified South Australians. When the original allegations of water fraud were revealed by the ABC, there was a press conference with all key South Australian senators, including Sarah Hanson-Young, Cory Bernadi, Nick Xenophon and Penny Wong. Commonwealth governments rarely benefit from this issue in the state where the Murray ends.

The Nationals have no presence in South Australia, and the electoral damage is likely to be limited to the Liberals in the seat of Mayo, where Centre Alliance MP Rebekah Sharkie has been strong on water policy. But this issue, so close to South Australian politics, could prove problematic on the national stage.

Tasmania

Michael Lester, researcher and PhD student at the Institute for the Study of Social Change

The Tasmanian North West Coast seat of Braddon is sitting on a knife-edge. Braddon is notoriously fickle, having changed hands five times since 1998, and margins are always tight.

Labor’s Justine Keay won the seat from the Liberal’s Brett Whitely in 2016. She retained the seat after having to resign and recontest it in the July 2018 citizenship byelections, but failed to make any electoral gains. She is now defending a very slim 1.7% margin.

In 2018, Keay had seven opponents. This election she is up against eight:

• Karen Wendy Spaulding from the United Australia Party
• independents Craig Brakey and Brett Michael Smith
• Shane Allan from Fraser Anning’s Conservative National Party
• Liberal Gavin Pearce
• The National’s Sally Milbourne
• Phill Parsons from The Greens
• Graham Gallaher from Pauline Hanson’s One Nation.

Braddon is hard to call. In the absence of polling, local commentators are looking to the betting odds which presently place Keay as clear favourite at $1.45, with Pearce at $2.65. Despite that, some see Braddon as Liberal Party’s best chance of winning a seat in Tasmania – especially since an electoral boundary redistribution in 2017 added the more affluent Port Sorell area.

Read more: Labor’s crackdown on temporary visa requirements won’t much help Australian workers

There is no single electorate-wide issue here. Braddon is a diverse mix of regional centres and agricultural districts extending from Devonport and Latrobe in the east, through Ulverstone, Burnie, Wynyard, Stanley, Smithton and Waratah, then down the west coast to the mining towns of Rosebery, Zeehan, Queenstown and the tourism and fishing village of Strahan. It also includes King Island in Bass Strait.

Tasmania’s recent economic renaissance has been slow to reach many areas of this electorate. So, candidates are aiming their promises at people’s concerns over economic development, jobs, youth training, health services and education. And both major parties have been careful to match almost anything the other side offers up.

Labor’s commitment of a A$25 million grant to support a Tasmanian AFL team has emerged as one big point of difference in the strongly pro-football Braddon, while the Liberals run a campaign on what better uses that money could be put to.

Victoria

We’ll be back with an update on Victoria next week.

– ref. State of the states: Palmer’s preference deal and watergate woes – http://theconversation.com/state-of-the-states-palmers-preference-deal-and-watergate-woes-115910

During his two-day royal visit this week, Prince William has met with survivors of the Christchurch mosque shootings and has praised New Zealand’s response to the attacks.

To the people of New Zealand and the people of Christchurch, to our Muslim community and all those who have rallied by your side, I stand with you in gratitude to what you have taught the world in these past weeks.

Earlier, Prince Hassan bin Talal of Jordan described New Zealanders as “citizens of the future”.

Globally, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s response to the attacks is seen as a new way of reacting to violent extremism. With an emphasis on what unites people, communities in different countries were motivated to express solidarity across religious and cultural divides.

In contrast, the opportunistic linking of the Easter Sunday terrorist attacks in Colombo, Sri Lanka, with Christchurch will once again serve to divide humanity.

Read more: Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the Sri Lanka terror attack. Here’s what that means

Solidarity at home

Domestically, the terrorist attack on Muslim worshippers in Christchurch was met by a display of unity. A heartfelt exchange of respect between the country’s leadership and the minority Muslim community characterised the days and weeks following the attack.

Read more: From Mahometan to Kiwi Muslim: history of NZ’s Muslim population

A renewed rejection of racism in all its forms, including Islamophobia, led to a public discussion of the Crusaders rugby team’s name. The government took decisive action by tightening gun laws and instituting a royal commission of inquiry into New Zealand’s security and intelligence agencies.

But the question now is whether New Zealand can translate its new-found domestic cohesion and goodwill into foreign policy.

Support for Palestinian sovereignty

The Israel-Palestine conflict is a good place to start. If solidarity at home is to influence global understanding and cooperation across cultures, Palestinian sovereignty must be a foreign policy priority.

The international community’s failure over the past 72 years to find a just and sustainable solution to the “Palestine question” is an ongoing source of discord between Muslims and non-Muslims.

Shortly after its establishment, the UN Alliance of Civilisations (UNAOC) noted:

The Israeli military occupation of Palestine has been perceived in the Muslim world as a form of colonialism and has led many to believe, rightly or wrongly, that Israel is in collusion with the “West”.

Palestinian casualties, dispossession and suffering due to the occupation fuel resentment and radicalisation in the Muslim world. The impunity an American veto allows Israel further enhances the perception of Western hypocrisy. The US and Israel’s disregard for the legal status of Jerusalem as corpus separatum undermines both the potential for peace between Israelis and Palestinians and an international rules-based system.

New Zealand needs to be more vocal in international forums in criticising Israel’s occupation policies.

Challenging Islamophobia

Islamophobia, or an anti-Muslim bias that incorrectly presents Muslims as a dangerous monolithic group, is both a domestic and global concern. The real danger is that Islamophobia becomes the norm.

Politicians, such as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, promote the notion of a clash of civilisations when they present Muslims as a threat to Christian Europe. The United Kingdom’s security strategy in response to the terrorist attacks in London on July 7 2005, called Prevent, is an example of anti-radicalisation policies that target people based on their faith, specifically Muslims.

Read more: Terror, Muslims, and a culture of fear: challenging the media messages

Islamophobia also finds expression in conflating radical and moderate Islamists. These groups may share the pursuit of an ideal state, based on Islamic teachings, but they differ drastically in their methods and interpretation of Islam. Autocratic governments in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region fuel Islamophobia when they dismiss these differences in order to demonise their moderate Islamist opposition.

This can be explained by the fact that moderate Islamism offers an authentic alternative to authoritarianism. For example, Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad and his late father, Hafez al-Assad, have a history of demonising and repressing the moderate Islamist Syrian Muslim Brotherhood (SMB) to ensure the regime’s political survival. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Egypt declared the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organisation in the wake of the 2010-11 Arab uprisings, which threatened autocrats across the MENA region.

Read more: Competing foreign interests trump Syrian aspirations for political change

A rules-based international system

The UAE and Saudi Arabia are key markets for New Zealand. They are also members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), our eighth-largest trading partner. In equating moderate Islamism with terrorism to contain domestic dissent, these states contribute to international disunity and hate.

New Zealand needs to resist pressure from these partners as well as from some other member countries in the Five Eyes intelligence alliance to view Islamists as monolithic. It also needs to enhance support for initiatives that strengthen global understanding and cooperation between non-Muslim and Muslim-majority countries such as the UNAOC.

At the UN General Assembly in September 2018, Ardern signalled a clear direction for foreign policy by calling for kindness, collectivism and an international rules-based system. This is in stark contrast to US President Donald Trump’s portentious rejection of globalism.

New Zealand’s response to the Christchurch terrorist attack showed the world values that, in Ardern’s words, “represent the very best of us”. The expectation remains that our foreign policy will follow through.

– ref. Why New Zealand needs to translate its response to Christchurch attacks into foreign policy – http://theconversation.com/why-new-zealand-needs-to-translate-its-response-to-christchurch-attacks-into-foreign-policy-115556

Bill Shorten is holding out the prospect of protecting Australian workers from foreign ones.

He has pledged to tighten the visa system for short-term skilled migrants, ensuring they have to be paid more so that “it isn’t cheaper to pay an overseas worker than pay a local worker”.

But the evidence does not support his claim that his policy proposal will boost local jobs and wages. He said

There are more than 1 million underemployed Australians wanting more work and youth unemployment is at 11.7%

At the same time, there are almost 1.6 million temporary visa holders with work rights in Australia, with the top end of town turning to temporary work visas to undercut local jobs, wages and conditions

Requirements have already been toughened

The first point to note is that Shorten’s policy relates only to short-term visas for skilled migrants. Up until 2017, these were known as 457 visas. Their number peaked at 126,000 in 2012-13.

Parliamentary Library

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull replaced the 457 visa with the 482 visa, partly in response to evidence that some employers had exploited the 457 to employ foreign workers on low wages.

The new visa required

• applicants to demonstrate work experience (minimum two years) and English language proficiency

• the sponsoring employer to demonstrate lack of success in finding a local worker to do the job

• the salary level to be at the market level for the role, and above what is known as the Temporary Skilled Migration Income Threshold. This is now about A$54,000.

Since August 2018, employers of workers with 482 visas have also had to pay a fee to the Department of Education and Training to subsidise apprenticeships. Known as the Skilling Australians Fund Levy, it ranges from $2,400 to $7,200, depending on the length of the visa and the employer’s annual turnover.

The core of Labor’s policy is to increase the income threshold to $65,000, a figure that will be indexed annually. The skilling levy would be 3% of the income threshold, a level that for some businesses would be an increase of 63%.

Skilled migrants are not the problem

The most recent statistics published by the federal government (for 2017-18) show a total of 83,470 people on temporary skilled worker visas (both 482 visas and residual 457 visas).

This means Shorten’s reference to the almost 1.6 million temporary visa holders with work rights in Australia – such as backpackers and international students (who we know are often exploited by unscrupulous employers) – is something of a red herring. Labor’s proposal won’t make any difference to them.

Read more: Crackdown on foreign workers is part of Shorten’s wages campaign

Even if the 83,470 workers that the policy would affect were being employed to undercut local wage expectations, their number – less than 1% of Australia’s 10 million total employees – is simply not enough to influence market wages. In no occupation are visa holders more than 1% of total employees.

But there’s scant evidence to suggest the 482 visas are routinely used to employ cheaper workers. The average base nominated salary for visas in 2017-18 was $94,800, well above the average full-time wage (about $85,000) and even higher than the $54,000 or Labor’s proposed $65,000 minimum.

Admittedly, averages don’t tell the full story. But in only one sector – food and accommodation, accounting for 10.7% of visas granted – was the average wage lower than $65,000.

It suggests that raising the income threshold won’t have much impact.

Labor’s proposals would be felt in the regions

There is one possible exception to this: regional and remote Australia, which has benefited the most from temporary skilled worker visas. If the market wage for say, an early career chef, is below $65,000 (which it could be for some places in Australia), a restaurant or café employer in a small town would no longer be able to employ a migrant worker at the going rate, and it might also struggle to find would be be a $7,800 levy.

Labor’s proposal would impose higher relative costs on regional employers.

Claims about the impact of temporary work visas on employment and wages have been heard but seldom subject to rigorous analysis.

A significant inquiry into short-term migrant work visas in Australia was conducted by a Senate select committee in 2015-16. It noted an inverse relationship between 457 visas granted and the unemployment rate. In other words, the visas were associated with low, rather than high unemployment rates.

This suggests visas are meeting genuine skills shortages rather than displacing Australian workers.

Migrants create as well as fill jobs

Migrant workers are also consumers. They spend their income, contributing to demand for goods and services from local businesses, which adds to the demand for workers generally.

The same dynamics apply as those involving all migrants. As peer-reviewed research by researchers at the Australian National University has shown, migration has had “no detectable effect on employment or wages of all workers who have lived in Australia for more than five years”.

These findings are essentially supported by the Productivity Commission.

In sum, there’s little evidence that Australia’s current visa program for temporary skilled migrants has a negative effect on local jobs or wages.

Labor’s plans are unlikely to achieve anything positive. They might even hurt.

Read more: Dog whistles, regional visas and wage theft – immigration policy is again an election issue

– ref. Labor’s crackdown on temporary visa requirements won’t much help Australian workers – http://theconversation.com/labors-crackdown-on-temporary-visa-requirements-wont-much-help-australian-workers-115844

The latest statistics on childhood poverty in New Zealand suggest that, on some key measures, things are worse than previously estimated.

About one in six children (16% or 183,000) live below a before-housing-cost relative poverty measure, but that figure jumps to almost one in four (23% or 254,000) once housing costs are accounted for. And 13% (148,000) are living in households that experience material hardship – 6% in severe hardship. These children don’t have such basic things as two good pairs of shoes. Their families regularly have to cut back on fresh fruit and veggies, put up with feeling cold and postpone visits to the doctor.

The data show that the government will need to do much more to reach its targets for reducing childhood poverty.

Read more: One in five NSW high school kids suffers “severe” deprivation of life’s essentials

Measuring child poverty

New Zealand introduced the Child Poverty Reduction Act at the end of last year. It was a bold move reflecting the Ardern government’s commitment to do something about New Zealand’s dismal child poverty statistics. Earlier this month, Stats NZ released the first set of baseline statistics required under the act.

Previous governments, both National and Labour, may have talked about child poverty but shied away from binding targets. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who has also made herself minister for child poverty reduction, has put through clear legislation, eventually winning cross-party support for it.

The act does two main things. First, it requires the government statistician to report annually on a set of four “primary” and six “supplementary” measures of child poverty. (One primary measure, poverty persistence, does not come into force until 2025.)

Second, it requires governments to set three-year and ten-year targets for each of the primary measures and to report on progress to parliament. Any failures to meet targets must be explained.

The three primary measures are:

1. Relative poverty, before housing costs: the proportion of children living in households whose equivalised disposable income before housing costs is less than 50% of the median. This measure compares a household’s income for the previous 12 months to the current median for all households. The median will move from year to year due to inflation and economic changes. A low-income household will improve its situation if its income moves by more than the median.
2. Constant value poverty after housing costs: the proportion of children living in households whose equivalised disposable income after housing costs is less than 50% of the base-year median. This measure gives an indication of the spending power households have after paying either rent or mortgage repayments, rates and insurance.
3. Material hardship: the proportion of children living in households that are experiencing material hardship, defined as having a score of six or more on the DEP-17 deprivation index.

The government’s targets

Well before the act was finalised, the prime minister had announced the government’s ten-year targets: 5% on the first measure, 10% on the second and 7% on the third.

These are ambitious targets, which would put New Zealand near the top of the OECD rankings. That said, they still imply a significant number of children in poverty.

During the evolution of the legislation, the government also decided to bring forward the starting year for measurement of the targets to 2018-19, therefore making the baseline year 2017-18. This has the advantage of ensuring the impact of its Families Package contributes to achieving the targets, but the disadvantage that targets had to be set before the official Stats NZ baseline measures were available.

The three-year targets were therefore expressed in percentage-point decreases, rather than in absolute terms (reductions of 6, 4 and 3 percentage points respectively).

Ironically, the worse-than-expected figures make the government’s short-term targets slightly easier to reach. Taking six percentage points off a larger number is easier to achieve than if the baseline had turned out lower than expected. Nonetheless, it must still lift 72,000 children over the first line, 42,000 over the after-housing-cost measure, and 37,000 out of the material hardship category.

How to reduce childhood poverty

The Families Package, announced before the 2017 election, will go part of the way. Its increases in the Working for Families tax credits and, to a lesser extent, the changes to the Accommodation Supplement will reduce child poverty, especially against the first before-housing-cost measure. Treasury has estimated that the Families Package will reduce the number of children below this measure by 64,000 by 2021.

The impact on the after-housing-cost measure is likely to be smaller because of rising rental costs, which grew by an average of 5.2% during 2018. The reduction in the number of children living under material hardship is also likely to be less substantial.

Other changes might have some effect. The government is committed to increasing the statutory minimum wage to $20 per hour by 2021. It was $15.75 for most of the baseline year, rising to $16.50 on April 1 2018. Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment analysis, however, suggests minimum wage increases will have a “relatively limited impact” on poverty among households with children because most poor kids are not living in households with a minimum-wage earner.

Housing initiatives, especially more state housing, will help eventually but will take too long to have any impact on the three-year poverty targets. The 2018 budget extensions to free and low-cost doctors’ visits for children and the broadening of access to the Community Services Card can be expected to help families experiencing material hardship, as will other changes such as the banning of tenancy letting fees. But these can only be expected to have marginal impacts.

Read more: NZ budget 2018: gains for health, housing and education in fiscally conservative budget

Substantial further initiatives will be needed over the next two years. The size of the task is illustrated here.

Michael Fletcher, CC BY-ND

The after-housing-costs measure must come down the most but has been heading in the right direction following the global financial crisis. This reflects the fact that it is adjusted only for price inflation and the incomes of some poor households have been rising more quickly than prices. The material hardship measure has also been trending down, probably for similar reasons.

The most challenging target will be the relative poverty measure. Recent good economic growth and a strong labour market have done nothing to reduce this measure. Indeed, it has been more or less constant for over a decade.

Cutting poverty on this measure requires bringing poor households nearer to the median, reducing inequality between the poor and those in the middle. A rising tide that lifts all boats equally will do nothing to reduce relative poverty.

The government will also need to ensure its policies help the poorest of the poor. Reaching the three primary targets but not cutting the numbers below the lowest poverty line would be a hollow achievement. Most of these children are in families reliant on benefit incomes. Part of any successful strategy to reduce child poverty must involve increasing the level of assistance to families on benefits.

– ref. New Zealand’s dismal record on child poverty and the government’s challenge to turn it around – http://theconversation.com/new-zealands-dismal-record-on-child-poverty-and-the-governments-challenge-to-turn-it-around-115366

This article is an edited extract from an essay, The search for ET, in The New Disruptors, the 64th edition of Griffith Review.

We’re publishing it as part of our occasional series Zoom Out, where authors explore key ideas in science and technology in the broader context of society and humanity.

Extraterrestrial life, that familiar science-fiction trope, that kitschy fantasy, that CGI nightmare, has become a matter of serious discussion, a “risk factor”, a “scenario”.

How has ET gone from sci-fi fairytale to a serious scientific endeavour modelled by macroeconomists, funded by fiscal conservatives and discussed by theologians?

Because, following a string of remarkable discoveries over the past two decades, the idea of alien life is not as far-fetched as it used to seem.

Discovery now seems inevitable and possibly imminent.

It’s just chemistry

While life is a special kind of complex chemistry, the elements involved are nothing special: carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and so on are among the most abundant elements in the universe. Complex organic chemistry is surprisingly common.

Amino acids, just like those that make up every protein in our bodies, have been found in the tails of comets. There are other organic compounds in Martian soil.

And 6,500 light years away a giant cloud of space alcohol floats among the stars.

Habitable planets seem to be common too. The first planet beyond our Solar System was discovered in 1995. Since then astronomers have catalogued thousands.

Based on this catalogue, astronomers from the University of California, Berkeley worked out there could be as many as 40 billion Earth-sized exoplanets in the so-called “habitable zone” around their star, where temperatures are mild enough for liquid water to exist on the surface.

There’s even a potentially Earth-like world orbiting our nearest neighbouring star, Proxima Centauri. At just four light years away, that system might be close enough for us to reach using current technology. With the Breakthrough Starshot project launched by Stephen Hawking in 2016, plans for this are already afoot.

Life is robust

It seems inevitable other life is out there, especially considering that life appeared on Earth so soon after the planet was formed.

The oldest fossils ever found here are 3.5 billion years old, while clues in our DNA suggest life could have started as far back as 4 billion years ago, just when giant asteroids stopped crashing into the surface.

Our planet was inhabited as soon as it was habitable – and the definition of “habitable” has proven to be a rather flexible concept too.

Life survives in all manner of environments that seem hellish to us:

Tantalisingly, some of these conditions seem to be duplicated elsewhere in the Solar System.

Snippets of promise

Mars was once warm and wet, and was probably a fertile ground for life before the Earth.

Today, Mars still has liquid water underground. One gas strongly associated with life on Earth, methane, has already been found in the Martian atmosphere, and at levels that mysteriously rise and fall with the seasons. (However, the methane result is under debate, with one Mars orbiter recently confirming the methane detection and another detecting nothing.)

Martian bugs might turn up as soon as 2021 when the ExoMars rover Rosalind Franklin will hunt for them with a two-metre drill.

Besides Earth and Mars, at least two other places in our Solar System might be inhabited. Jupiter’s moon Europa and Saturn’s moon Enceladus are both frozen ice worlds, but the gravity of their colossal planets is enough to churn up their insides, melting water to create vast subglacial seas.

In 2017, specialists in sea ice from the University of Tasmania concluded that some Antarctic microbes could feasibly survive on these worlds. Both Europa and Enceladus have undersea hydrothermal vents, just like those on Earth where life may have originated.

When a NASA probe tasted the material geysered into space out of Enceladus last June it found large organic molecules. Possibly there was something living among the spray; the probe just didn’t have the right tools to detect it.

Russian billionaire Yuri Milner has been so enthused by this prospect, he wants to help fund a return mission.

A second genesis?

A discovery, if it came, could turn the world of biology upside down.

All life on Earth is related, descended ultimately from the first living cell to emerge some 4 billion years ago.

Bacteria, fungus, cacti and cockroaches are all our cousins and we all share the same basic molecular machinery: DNA that makes RNA, and RNA that makes protein.

A second sample of life, though, might represent a “second genesis” – totally unrelated to us. Perhaps it would use a different coding system in its DNA. Or it might not have DNA at all, but some other method of passing on genetic information.

By studying a second example of life, we could begin to figure out which parts of the machinery of life are universal, and which are just the particular accidents of our primordial soup.

Perhaps amino acids are always used as essential building blocks, perhaps not.

We might even be able to work out some universal laws of biology, the same way we have for physics – not to mention new angles on the question of the origin of life itself.

A second independent “tree of life” would mean that the rapid appearance of life on Earth was no fluke; life must abound in the universe.

It would greatly increase the chances that, somewhere among those billions of habitable planets in our galaxy, there could be something we could talk to.

Perhaps life is infectious

If, on the other hand, the discovered microbes were indeed related to us that would be a bombshell of a different kind: it would mean life is infectious.

When a large meteorite hits a planet, the impact can splash pulverised rock right out into space, and this rock can then fall onto other planets as meteorites.

Life from Earth has probably already been taken to other planets – perhaps even to the moons of Saturn and Jupiter. Microbes might well survive the trip.

In 1969, Apollo 12 astronauts retrieved an old probe that had sat on the Moon for three years in extreme cold and vacuum – there were viable bacteria still inside.

As Mars was probably habitable before Earth, it’s possible life originated there before hitchhiking on a space rock to here. Perhaps we’re all Martians.

Even if we never find other life in our Solar System, we might still detect it on any one of thousands of known exoplanets.

It is already possible to look at starlight filtered through an exoplanet and tell something about the composition of its atmosphere; an abundance of oxygen could be a telltale sign of life.

A testable hypothesis

The James Webb Space Telescope, planned for a 2021 launch, will be able to take these measurements for some of the Earth-like worlds already discovered.

Just a few years later will come space-based telescopes that will take pictures of these planets directly.

Using a trick a bit like the sun visor in your car, planet-snapping telescopes will be paired with giant parasols called starshades that will fly in tandem 50,000 kilometres away in just the right spot to block the blinding light of the star, allowing the faint speck of a planet to be captured.

The colour and the variability of that point of light could tell us the length of the planet’s day, whether it has seasons, whether it has clouds, whether it has oceans, possibly even the colour of its plants.

The ancient question “Are we alone?” has graduated from being a philosophical musing to a testable hypothesis. We should be prepared for an answer.

– ref. Why the idea of alien life now seems inevitable and possibly imminent – http://theconversation.com/why-the-idea-of-alien-life-now-seems-inevitable-and-possibly-imminent-115643

The integrity of Australia’s electoral processes is under unprecedented challenge in this federal election.

The campaign has already been marred by fake news, political exploitation of social media falsehoods and amplification by mainstream media of crude slurs made on Facebook under the cover of anonymity.

We have seen our first recorded instance of Facebook running Australian fake news.

It was a false post about the Labor Party’s tax policies, wrongly saying Labor intended to introduce a 40% inheritance tax.

It was interesting to trace how this fakery was created.

The false post had a link to a press release issued in January by Treasurer Josh Frydenberg.

It said Labor’s assistant treasury spokesman, Andrew Leigh, had written an article 13 years ago – when he was an academic – that favoured introducing an inheritance tax. Thirteen years ago – before he was even in politics.

Read more: ‘Fake news’ is already spreading online in the election campaign – it’s up to us to stop it

Then to add to the fakery, and seemingly by coincidence, the Liberal Party had a black van driving around city streets with large signs saying “Labor will tax you to death”.

The Liberals have denied being involved in the duplicity and there is no evidence to suggest they were. But the false post had just enough of an impressionistic link to the Liberal attack to make its message plausible: a tincture of “truthiness”.

Then the Coalition made mischief with it.

George Christensen, Nationals MP for the Queensland seat of Dawson, put up a Facebook post three days after the original, saying:

Labor does the bidding of their union bosses [and] the union bosses have demanded Bill Shorten introduce a death tax.

The original post also generated memes from far-right political groups, piling new lies on top of the old.

Labor has demanded Facebook take down the original, but there is no sign it has done so.

The delay is not only unconscionable, but has given the likes of Christensen and others the opportunity to cloak the original falsehood in political commentary, creating the basis for a specious circular argument. It goes like this:

Facebook posts a lie. It generates political reaction. The political reaction absorbs the lie into political speech. Political speech should not be censored. Therefore taking down the original lie would be censorship.

This is yet one more way in which Facebook’s irresponsibility taints the democratic process.

So much for the fine promises made by Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, last year on what became known as his “apology tour” of Washington and Brussels.

He told officials he would stop the spread of fake news and voter manipulation on Facebook.

He told a US Senate committee that every advertiser who wanted to run political ads would need to be authorised, and that would mean confirming their identity and location.

Yet the ABC is reporting that just months after Zuckerberg’s “apology tour”, Facebook was playing ducks and drakes with the Australian Electoral Commission over precisely this question of authorisation.

The ABC reports that it has obtained documents under freedom-of-information that show a prolonged battle last year between the commission and Facebook over unauthorised political ads from a mysterious outfit called Hands Off Our Democracy, which was paying for sponsored posts attacking left-wing groups and political parties.

The posts eventually disappeared, but only after Facebook tried to give the commission the brush-off.

The ABC is also reporting that almost a year after Zuckerberg made his promises to clean up Facebook’s act, and with Australia’s federal election only three weeks away, Facebook still has not brought its new authorisation rules to Australia.

Meanwhile, the Electoral Commission is on the front foot about fake news.

A Google search for “Facebook carries fake news about Labor’s tax policy” brings up as its top item an ad from the commission warning people not to be misled by disinformation.

The commission has set up a special electoral integrity taskforce, which includes the Australian Signals Directorate and ASIO, to try to head off potential threats to the democratic process.

A further threat to the integrity of Australia’s electoral process is the interplay between Facebook and elements of the mainstream media.

A few days ago, the convoy protesting against the Adani coal mine arrived in Queensland, led by environmental activist and former Greens leader Bob Brown.

Simultaneously, a private Facebook group called Stop Adani Convoy posted a number of repugnant messages, including a reference to gas chambers.

Read more: Australian governments have a long history of trying to manipulate the ABC – and it’s unlikely to stop now

The post was anonymous, but it was picked up and amplified by Brisbane’s Courier-Mail newspaper under the heading: “Bob Brown’s mob of revolting protesters liken coal mines to gas chambers”.

Well down in the story, the newspaper said it was not suggesting Brown had anything to do with this statement, an inclusion that was all about avoiding a writ for libel.

Brown said: “Some of the headlines in the Murdoch media are simply disgraceful. They’re a disgrace to journalism”.

This interaction of social media and elements of the mainstream media, in which extremist language and feverish controversy are exploited as a means of dividing the community and of promoting a reactionary political worldview, was a potent feature of the 2016 US presidential campaign and the Brexit referendum the same year.

Where the issue is highly controversial and emotive – as with climate change, immigration or Brexit – the extremism expressed on social media makes headlines in the mainstream media, raising the political temperature and fuelling further partisanship.

There is a lot of research that shows how these effects are damaging democracies around the world. The findings are laid out in books such as those by Cass Sunstein (#republic), Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt (How Democracies Die) and A.C. Grayling (Democracy and Its Crisis).

An important long-term issue in the 2019 federal election is how robust Australia’s democratic institutional arrangements turn out to be in the face of these pressures.

– ref. Lies, obfuscation and fake news make for a dispiriting – and dangerous – election campaign – http://theconversation.com/lies-obfuscation-and-fake-news-make-for-a-dispiriting-and-dangerous-election-campaign-115845

Are you allergic to penicillin? Perhaps you have a friend or relative who is? With about one in ten people reporting a penicillin allergy, that’s not altogether surprising.

Penicillin is the most commonly reported drug allergy. But the key word here is “reported”. Only about 20% of this 10% have a true penicillin allergy – so the figure would be one in 50 rather than one in ten.

People may experience symptoms they think are a result of taking penicillin, but are actually unrelated. If these symptoms are not investigated, they continue with the belief that they should steer clear of penicillin.

Read more: Weekly Dose: penicillin, the mould that saves millions of lives

This can become a problem if a person is sick and needs to be treated with penicillin. Penicillin and related antibiotics are the most common group of drugs used to treat a broad range of infections, from chest or throat, to urinary tract, to skin and soft tissue infections.

The overestimation of penicillin allergies is also not ideal because it means people are being treated with a broader range of antibiotics than necessary, which contributes to the problem of antibiotic resistance.

Yes, penicillin comes from mould

To understand more about why so many people think they’re allergic to penicillin, we need to look at a brief history of the drug.

Penicillin (benzylpenicillin or Penicillin G) was first discovered in 1928 and first used in 1941.

It was grown from a mould, as it is today. The liquid nutrient broth the mould grew in was drained, and the penicillin purified from it.

In the 1930s and 40s, and even through the 1960s and 70s, purification techniques were not as efficient as they are today. So, many early allergic reactions are thought to be due to impurities in the early penicillin products – especially injections.

Penicillin is now more versatile and can kill a wider range of bacteria than in its earlier days. From shutterstock.com

Penicillin and the range of antibiotic compounds that followed it revolutionised how we treat bacterial infections.

This led to widespread, and sometimes inappropriate, use of these medicines. Antibiotics do not work against viruses, but are sometimes prescribed for bacterial infections that occur while people have viral infections such as glandular fever.

We know using penicillin while a person has glandular fever can cause a rash that looks like penicillin allergy but is not related.

People may report symptoms to their health professionals that seem like a reaction to penicillin. Perhaps these symptoms are not fully investigated because it takes time and can be expensive – they’re just put down to the common penicillin allergy.

Further, some people perceive other side effects of a penicillin antibiotic such as nausea or diarrhoea as an allergy, when these are not, in fact, allergy symptoms.

From this point, the penicillin family will not be used to treat these patients.

Read more: We know _why_ bacteria become resistant to antibiotics, but _how_ does this actually happen?

The problem of antibiotic resistance

An allergy to penicillin can also limit the use of some other antibiotics which may cross-react with the allergy.

Cross reaction occurs when the chemical structure of another antibiotic is so similar to the structure of penicillin that the immune system gets confused and recognises it as the same thing.

To avoid this, doctors need to look to antibiotics from other medication classes when prescribing patients with a documented penicillin allergy.

But we need to be careful when drawing on a wider range of antibiotics. This is because the more bacteria are exposed to antibiotics, the more likely they are to develop resistance to these antibiotics.

The range of penicillins we have today came from experimenting with the chemistry of the original penicillin molecule and changing its properties. From shutterstock.com

To address the growing problem of antibiotic resistance, we now try to restrict antibiotics as much as possible to the lowest level one that will kill the specific bacteria.

We don’t kill tiny ants in our gardens with a sledgehammer, so likewise, we use a narrow-spectrum antibiotic wherever possible to keep the broad-spectrum antibiotics for severe and complex infections.

The penicillin family contains both narrow and broad-spectrum antibiotics. Ruling out this family and its “cousins” when we don’t need to can limit the choice of antibiotics and increase the chance of making other antibiotics less useful.

Can I get tested?

Studies show penicillin allergy reduces over time. So even if you did have a true penicillin allergy, it may have gone away over several years.

Under the guidance of your doctor, it is possible to be tested to see if you’re allergic – or still allergic – to penicillin.

A skin “scratch” test involves injecting a small amount of penicillin and monitoring for a reaction. Rescue medications will be on hand in case you do have a severe reaction. Your GP will probably refer you to an allergy specialist to get this done.

Read more: Common skin rashes and what to do about them

If you have been told you’re allergic, you should first try to find out when the reaction occurred and what happened in as much detail as possible.

Let your GP know all this information and he or she can then decide whether a skin test might be appropriate.

Do not try a test dose at home – the risk of a life-threatening reaction is not worth it.

And if you believe you are allergic to penicillin, the most important thing to do is tell each health professional (doctor, pharmacist, nurse, dentist, etc.) you come into contact with.

– ref. Think you’re allergic to penicillin? There’s a good chance you’re wrong – http://theconversation.com/think-youre-allergic-to-penicillin-theres-a-good-chance-youre-wrong-112687

Sign up to the Beating Around the Bush newsletter here, and suggest a plant we should cover at batb@theconversation.edu.au.

Almost 30 years ago, the specimen of a weird tree collected in the southern part of Kakadu National Park was packed in my luggage. It was on its way to the mecca of botanical knowledge in London, the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew.

But what was it?

With unusual inflated winged fruits, it flummoxed local botanists who had not seen anything like it before. To crack the trees identity, it needed more than the limited resources of the Darwin Herbarium.

Later, we discovered a fragmentary specimen hidden in a small box at the end of a little-visited collection vault in the Darwin Herbarium. And it had been sitting there quietly since 1974.

Most of the specimens inside this box just irritate botanists as being somewhat intractable to identify. This is what’s known as the “GOK” box, standing for “God Only Knows”.

Together with the resources of Kew Gardens, the species was finally connected with a genus and recognised as a new species.

A year later, it was named Hildegardia australiensis.

The Conversation

Mysterious global distribution

The species is the only Australian representative for an international genus, Hildegardia. Under Northern Territory legislation, it’s listed as “near threatened”, due to its small numbers and limited distribution.

The genus Hildegardia was named in 1832 by Austrian botanists Schott and Endlicher. They named it after Hildegard, the eleventh-century German abbess and mystic, the “Sybil of the Rhine”.

The genus retains some of this mystical and elusive nature. It’s rare with small isolated populations, traits that seem to dominate for all bar one of the species in the genus.

Twelve species of Hildegardia are recognised: one from Cuba, three from Africa, four from Madagascar and one each from India, the Philippines, Indonesia and Australia.

This bizarre global distribution is even more unusual in that almost the entire generic lineage seems to be verging on extinction.

The Australian species fits this pattern of small fragmented populations and, despite being a reasonably sized tree at up to 10 metres tall, remained unknown until 1991.

God only knows what unidentified specimens are in this box. I.D. Cowie, NT Herbarium, Author provided (No reuse)

Rarely seen and hard to find

Generally, Hildegardia species are tall, deciduous trees of well-drained areas, often growing on rocky hills.

Their trunks have a smooth, thin bark which smells unpleasant and exudes a gum when wounded. Most species have heart-shaped leaves and bear a profusion of orange-red flowers when leafless. These are followed by strange, winged fruits with one or two seeds.

Hildegardia australiensis would have to be one of the most rarely seen trees in Australia in its natural habitat. It is native to the margins of the western Arnhem Land Plateau with scattered populations on limestone and sandstone scree slopes.

These are all difficult locations to visit, so if you really want to see it, a helicopter is recommended. Fortunately it is easy to grow and has found its way into limited cultivation.

Several trees have been in the Darwin Botanic Gardens since the early nineties and a few are known to have been planted in some of the urban parks in greater Darwin. The plantings have been more to showcase a rare and odd-looking tree rather than any great ornamental value.

Growing on ‘sickness country’

In the NT the tree is so poorly known that it has no common name other than the default generic name of Hildegardia.

It appears to have no recorded Indigenous uses, which is perhaps not surprising as much of its distribution is in “sickness country”.

Hildegardia australiensis often grows in rocky fields. I.D. Cowie, NT Herbarium, Author provided (No reuse)

This is country with uranium deposits, and was avoided by the traditional owners. Rock art showing figures with swollen joints has been interpreted as showing radiation poisoning.

But it does have one claim to fame. A heated debate between conservationists and miners was sparked during a proposed development of the Coronation Hill gold, platinum and palladium mine in Kakadu National Park.

The main population of H. australiensis is only a stone’s throw from Coronation Hill and the species became one of the key identified biodiversity assets that could have been threatened by development of the mine.

The area around Coronation Hill, or Guratba in the local Jawoyn language, is also of considerable spiritual significance to the Jawoyn traditional landowners and forms part of the identified “sickness country”. A creation deity, Bula, rests and lays dormant under the sickness country and should not be disturbed.

Eventually, these concerns culminated in the Hawke government on June 17, 1991 to no longer allow the mine development.

Read more: The Price of God at Coronation Hill

So are the seeds edible?

While there appears to be no known uses of the Australian species, the tree may have hidden potential.

The closely related trees Sterculia and Brachychiton are well known as bush tucker plants and good sources of fibre. The local Top End species Sterculia quadrifida, for instance, is commonly known as the Peanut Tree and is a highly favoured bush tucker plant.

The fibre potential of H. australiensis is being explored by internationally acclaimed Darwin-based papermaker, Winsome Jobling. Cyclone Marcus whipped through Darwin in 2018 and one of the casualties was a planted tree of H. australiensis in the Darwin Botanic Gardens.

The strange winged fruit of Hildegardia australiensis. I.D. Cowie, NT Herbarium, Author provided (No reuse)

Thankfully, material was salvaged. Winsome has material stored in her freezer awaiting extraction and processing to see what the fibre potential is.

H. barteri, an African species in the Hildegardia genus, has a broad distribution through half a dozen African countries. And the West African locals have a number of uses for it, from eating the seeds to using the bark as fibre for ropes. But we don’t know just yet if the flesh or seed in the Australian species is edible.

Whether the Australian species might also harbour such useful properties still awaits some testing and research. Fortunately, with the creation deity Bula watching over the natural populations the species, unlike many of its close relatives, appears secure in the wild.

Sign up to Beating Around the Bush, a series that profiles native plants: part gardening column, part dispatches from country, entirely Australian.

– ref. Bizarrely distributed and verging on extinction, this ‘mystic’ tree went unidentified for 17 years – http://theconversation.com/bizarrely-distributed-and-verging-on-extinction-this-mystic-tree-went-unidentified-for-17-years-115239